Bold Ministers

Introduction

A Pile of “Glory Stuff”?

An adult Christian was overheard commenting on a certain confusion he experienced when watching various televangelists as a child. He would occasionally hear a preacher say, “Give glory to God!” The child wondered about the meaning of this imperative. All he could think of was a pile of this “glory stuff” somewhere, and he was supposed to go there, get a double handful of it, and offer it to God. But didn’t God have enough glory already? How was it possible to give Him more than what He already had? And what was this “glory stuff,” anyway?

Such childhood thinking eventually was replaced with adult thinking, of course (compare 1 Corinthians 13:11). But a certain element of the question remained to be addressed: How does the concept of “glory” come into play as we live before God in a fallen world? The apostle Paul has the answer.

Lesson Context

By AD 57, the year that Paul wrote the letter we call 2 Corinthians, he had developed a multiyear relationship with the church he had planted in Corinth. He had established that congregation on his second missionary journey of AD 52–54 (Acts 18:1–11). Bible experts recognize this letter as the most difficult to understand among all 13 of Paul’s epistles. This letter and others to the church in Corinth (see 1 Corinthians 5:9; 2 Corinthians 2:3–4; 7:8, 12) reveal that Paul had stayed in touch. Such was the nature of his church-planting ministry.

The letters of 1 and 2 Corinthians show a congregation troubled on several fronts. Challenges to Paul’s apostolic authority aggravated those troubles, and his letters to that church feature responses to personal criticisms leveled at him (1 Corinthians 9:1–2; 2 Corinthians 10:10; 11:5; 12:11–12; etc.). Therefore, Paul used much ink in 2 Corinthians to defend the legitimacy of his apostolic calling. Indeed, the more than 500 words of 2 Corinthians 2:12–3:18 set the stage for longer defenses of his apostolic ministry later in the epistle. Today’s lesson covers a majority of those 24 verses.